Toronto's biggest hype man is a photographer on roller skates
Toronto creative Khary Safari, known on social media as the dancing photographer, is a producer, event manager, photographer and artist.
He's one of Toronto's biggest hype men behind the camera, and he does it on roller skates.
Safari is also the owner of Content Day Studio and the creator of Open Concept TO, a performance art party that showcases local creatives.
Raised in Parkdale, he has been long grounded in community and art.
Having run his own businesses since he was 19, Safari taught himself how to photograph, building himself up from a freelance photographer to the owner of his own studio.
With a big heart and an open door policy, his main objectives are to inspire, encourage and support local artists. Those who get to know him, fall in love with his energy.
Safari founded his first creative content studio in 2021. During the pandemic, he had begun meeting with a creative team once a week, trying to uplight local brands by creating content for them.
"It was a free day of creating just for the fun of it. So when I had the opportunity to open up my first studio, it was natural to call it content day," he said.
The first iteration of Content Day Studio opened in a storefront underneath Safari's Dundas West apartment, but he had to say goodbye to that space when a developer purchased the building.
Fortunately he had been working closely with OBJX Studio in the Stockyards District and became aware of a vacant studio space neighbouring them, so he moved in and opened Content Day Studio as it exists today.
The space is available to rent for anyone who wants to create content, or host an event. You can also take advantage of Content Day's own team and book a photography or video session.
Safari says he's known as the dancing photographer because he often dances with his camera in hand.
It's safe to say he's a fast learner since he's only been behind the camera for five or six years, and more shockingly, roller skating for two.
This spring/summer season at Fashion Art Toronto, he even debuted as a model, walking down the runway for designer Dean Ellis while taking photographs of audience members.
Ellis explained that Safari was hand selected for his personality, precisely because of the dynamic energy he's known for in the local arts community.
Safari credits the friends he's known all his life who he shared creative outlets with at a young age – from boxing, and dancing to filming movies on their families' camcorders and pretending to be in boy bands – to making him the artist he is today.
In fact, Content Day's in-house DJ, Dear James, is one of Safari's Parkdale friends of at least 20 years.
Safari says his biggest influence as an artist is his mom however, who has always been passionate about bringing people together and bettering the community.
"I feel like she was a good influence in Parkdale," he said. As it happens, she is also the likely reason that Safari took to photography so naturally.
She was a hobby photographer with a film camera, who shot every family event Safari remembers. So I played with her camera, but I never considered it a passion. It was just a way of capturing our lives, he said.
It wasn't until much later that he borrowed the camera of an aspiring photographer who he was dating in Vancouver and found himself unable to put it down.
"She was jealous of me because I just had a knack for it," he smiled, as he described buying his own camera and photographing everything that captivated him in the city.
Safari's roller skates became attached to him in a similarly serendipitous way, via another person's creative objective. This time it was local artist and OBJX studio manager Katrina Anastasia who had ordered a pair of rollerskates for a music video. She'd received two pairs instead of one, and gave the extra set to Safari.
Even though he'd never roller skated before, he wore them to shoot a portion of Anastasia’s music video.
"When it comes to video, it allows me to get those stable, gliding shots," he said. Not to mention, it makes things more fun. Now you can regularly find Safari roller skating during photoshoots, and at events, hyping up his subjects while he dances around them with his camera.
"Life is a production and I want to produce the best life for myself and the people around me," he said. In order to continue hyping up local creatives, Safari has opened the doors of Content Day for an open studio every Thursday.
The studio's free Content and Chill event, allows creatives to network, socialize, and create content in the space. Safari curates sets for photographers to play with and they'll bring their own models, props and lighting.
DJ Dear James also hosts a DJ social so emerging artists can learn to DJ and practice. We have a whole DJ guild now, because we have all these intro level DJs playing with professionals, said Safari proudly.
"I'm just glad that what we're doing is cultivating authentic artists," said Safari. The creatives that find themselves in the Content Day Studio aren't people looking for a quick fix. They're artists who want to learn, express themselves, and do it all surrounded by good people.
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